Along with other anti-imperialist formations across the world, the Friends of the Filipino People in Struggle expresses its solidarity with the Palestinian people and the resistance groups waging armed struggle in the exercise of their right to self-determination.
We call on our members, friends, allies and all freedom loving people to carry out actions of solidarity with the Palestinian people in these days so important to their cause and the global anti-imperialist struggle.
Ever since the start of Zionist colonization at the end of the 19th century – supported by the European colonial powers through Sykes-Picot, the British Mandate, and the United Nations –, hundreds of thousands of Palestinian families have lost their homes and livelihoods during the Nakba, millions of Palestinians were forced to become refugees in camps spread across the Middle East and elsewhere, and millions more live under brutal conditions created by the Israeli occupation.
Over the years, we have seen entire generations of Palestinians who were born and died as prisoners in their own land, held hostage by the Israeli occupation force that surrounded and blockaded them, and compelled to watch as more and more Israeli settlers and ultranationalists continued to take what little remained of the land supposedly promised them.
Support the Palestinian struggle against injustice
We have seen how Israeli security forces killed those who dared to resist, or incarcerated them without trial or even the semblance of due process.
We have seen how countless unarmed Palestinians, including children, have been murdered or maimed by Israeli bombs and bullets.
We have seen how Israel – armed and financed by the United States and European states – denied the Palestinians their most basic human rights and, through increasingly draconian security policies, dehumanized them and even desecrated their most cherished and holiest sites.
We have seen how, in the name of counter-terrorism, Israel has prevented international aid from reaching occupied Palestinian territories, while designating or persecuting humanitarian workers and human rights defenders as “terrorists”.
We have seen the hypocrisy and racism inherent in the Western governments’ rejection of the Palestinians’ right to self-determination even as this right is celebrated when invoked by other nations.
Everything that we have seen, the Palestinians experienced first-hand. They are a people who, for the longest time, have known nothing but occupation and the cruelty and viciousness of a regime that appears intent to take away from them not just every inch of land, but every shred of dignity they have.
It is therefore not surprising that the Palestinians are fighting back. Against a backdrop of suffering and oppression, we can only see this latest uprising of the Palestinian resistance as a people’s bid to defend their rights and to expel an occupying power from their territories. We cannot expect the Palestinians to simply accept the inhumanity being inflicted on them, or the gradual yet systematic theft of their homeland, or the destruction of their heritage. We cannot expect passivity in the face of such grave injustices.
Road to peace – liberation
We must acknowledge that the only road to peace is for Palestine to be liberated from the river to the sea, for the right of return for all Palestinian refugees, and for the world to recognize the Palestinians’ right to self-determination. How ever way the current uprising develops, this will not be the final chapter of the Palestinian struggle for their homeland – not as long as Palestinians are denied their right to return and to freedom. It is a struggle that we must openly embrace and support, cognizant of the history that gave rise to it and the inequity that fuels it.
Long live the Palestinian struggle for return and liberation from the river to the sea!
Victory to the Palestinian people and their heroic resistance!
Long live the bond between the Palestinian and Filipino people – together we will be victorious!
